CBI names Raja Bhaiya as accused in DSP Zia’s killing

The arrest of former Uttar Pradesh minister Raja Bhaiyya may now be a matter of time. Five days after the murder of DSP Zia-ul-Haque posted at Kunda in Pratapgarh district of Uttar Pradesh, the CBI on Thursday took over the investigations and filed four FIRs in connection with the incident.

It named former Uttar Pradesh minister Raghuraj Pratap Singh alias Raja Bhaiyya as an accused in the murder based on the complaint of the police officer’s widow Parveen Azad, besides four others who have been identified as Om Srivastava, Gulshan Yadav, Guddu Singh and Rohit Singh.

CBI officials said that apart from murder charges, the accused have been booked for criminal conspiracy, which the state police had slapped on Raja Bhaiyya on Sunday after Parveen alleged that the former minister had conspired to kill her husband.

Officials said that with the charges converted to murder under section 302 of the IPC, the arrest of Raja Bhaiyya was now imminent and the CBI team investigating the matter could interrogate and then arrest him.

Sources said a team of CBI sleuths have left Lucknow for Kunda. The state government recently transferred the case to the CBI owing to intense political pressure from opposition parties accusing the SP government of shielding the culprits.